Kazam wants you to come for the hardware, stay for the service

Kazam has a battle on its hands. The company may have been launched by former HTC execs, but it can only trade on that association for so long. That's something the firm is directly addressing here at MWC, it seems, with the launch of two new octacore handsets -- the Tornado 2 5.0, and Tornado 5.5. Two phones that it hopes will have mass appeal. We got to look at a pre-release version of the former, which uses MediaTek's MT6592 (clocked at 1.7GHz) that launched late last year. The Tornado 2 5.0 will also come with a 5-inch, 720p IPS display, sport an SD card slot (to augment the 8GB onboard), have dual SIM capabilities, and an 8-megapixel camera. When it launches in Europe later this year, it'll do so somewhere in the £250 region (depending on markets).

The device itself is unassuming in its design. The all-black body and minimal design are simplistic. While not at all unattractive, it's not a handset you will be able to pick out at a distance. The version we got to spend some time with didn't have final software, so we're unable to comment on its performance, but that's something we hope to be able to report on in more detail sooner rather than later. That's also why you'll see capacitive buttons, and on screen ones in the gallery below.

Gallery|14 Photos

Kazam hands-on

More important than the phone itself, is that we got to learn a bit more about the mysterious Kazam. The company informed us it's not just trying to make reasonably priced phones, the plan is broader than that. While the phones it makes will likely continue to be affordable, Kazam is also putting an emphasis on high-quality after sales customer support, such as offering a free cracked screen replacement scheme and remote assistance with your device. Will that be enough to pull it out from the shadows of its origins? Well, ironically, it's already receiving the sincerest form of flattery from HTC, which is a promising start.